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EDITORS’ NOTES

This is one of those dream-team combos: Carole King and James Taylor, two heavyweights of the early-‘70s singer-songwriter era reunited at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, where so many singer-songwriters got their start, with a sterling backup band featuring guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Leland Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel. Throw in all the major hits from each artist, from Taylor’s “Carolina In My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James” to King’s “So Far Away,” “It’s Too Late” and “I Feel the Earth Move” and you’ve got a high watermark accomplishment. This 2007 performance is top-notch throughout. Taylor and King both sing with an expressiveness that never sounds as if they might be the slightest bit tired of performing these songs after all these years. It helps that the band kicks up the perfect accompaniments, supporting the songs with a sweet purr throughout. By the time you get to the King-penned “You’ve Got a Friend,” it’s only a question as to who should take the lead vocal. (They harmonize to perfection.) For fans of either artist, this will surely satisfy.

EDITORS’ NOTES

This is one of those dream-team combos: Carole King and James Taylor, two heavyweights of the early-‘70s singer-songwriter era reunited at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, where so many singer-songwriters got their start, with a sterling backup band featuring guitarist Danny Kortchmar, bassist Leland Sklar and drummer Russ Kunkel. Throw in all the major hits from each artist, from Taylor’s “Carolina In My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James” to King’s “So Far Away,” “It’s Too Late” and “I Feel the Earth Move” and you’ve got a high watermark accomplishment. This 2007 performance is top-notch throughout. Taylor and King both sing with an expressiveness that never sounds as if they might be the slightest bit tired of performing these songs after all these years. It helps that the band kicks up the perfect accompaniments, supporting the songs with a sweet purr throughout. By the time you get to the King-penned “You’ve Got a Friend,” it’s only a question as to who should take the lead vocal. (They harmonize to perfection.) For fans of either artist, this will surely satisfy.

About Carole King

Carole King examines the complicated realities of love with a tenderness and swagger rare among her more plaintive ’70s folk-rock peers. In the early ’60s, alongside folks like Neil Diamond and her then-husband Gerry Goffin, King was an endlessly versatile Brill Building songwriter. There, she elevated girl-group anthems like The Shirelles’ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” beyond mere bubblegum, tapped into gospel’s volcanic power alongside a young Aretha Franklin, and embraced wistful psychedelia, cowriting the Monkees smash “Pleasant Valley Sunday.” Then declaring her independence with a mix of vulnerable rock and visceral soul, the native New Yorker defined and deepened the singer/songwriter era’s emotional intimacy with albums like her 1971 solo breakthrough, Tapestry. She also wrote the template for transitioning from a behind-the-scenes songwriter into a full-fledged star. Whether pairing her pained explorations of fraying romance with the seductive longing of classic R&B balladry ("It's Too Late") or strutting like a blues singer as she celebrated the life-changing power of lust ("I Feel the Earth Move"), King shaped multiple generations of confessional singers as wildly distinctive as Tori Amos, Erykah Badu, Amy Winehouse, and Adele.